Song Exploder - Porter Robinson - Get Your Wish

Episode Date: April 21, 2021

Porter Robinson is a Grammy-nominated electronic artist and DJ from North Carolina. In 2014, his first album hit #1 on Billboard’s Dance chart, and he was named MTVU’s Artist of the Year, and one of the top DJs in the world — but then, he got stuck. He didn’t release his second album for seven years, until April 2021. In this episode, he talks about what he was grappling with in those intervening years, and how all of that became part of his song "Get Your Wish." For more, visit songexploder.net/porter-robinson

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirway. Porter Robinson is a Grammy-nominated artist and DJ from North Carolina. In 2014, his first album hit number one on Billboard's Dance Chart, and he was named MTV U's Artist of the Year and one of the top DJs in the world. But then, he got stuck. He didn't release his second album for seven years until April 2021. In this episode, he talks about what he was grappling with for all those years and how all of it became part of his song, Get Your Wish.

My name is Porter Robinson. I first started touring internationally at the ages of 18 and 19. I was just like a nerdy kid in high school, and I had been making beats on the computer purely for fun with no expectation of success ever. But Friday afternoons, I would get out of school and I would go get on a plane and I would do a show that Friday night. I'd do a show Saturday night.

I'd fly home Sunday. And people were writing about what I was doing, like the first whiffs of success that, you know, the adults are proud of you. I would be lying if I said it didn't shape my identity in some serious ways. I really was addicted and I was really wrapped up in the kind of sense of self-worth that I got from that. Get Your Wish was written around this time where I was basically saying, like, I'm not sure that I want to be successful at music.

I'm pretty sure that the attention that I've gotten so far has been bad for me. But I wanted to make music so badly. It's a real place of comfort for me to just be touching an instrument because it's so much easier for me to toy around on the piano than it is for me to have a conversation. with somebody. So just a ton of my time at home is spent sitting in front of the piano and it generates a lot of ideas in the end for me. I put on this metronome app on my phone and I placed my phone down on my piano and I just played this incredibly syncopated thing that was on the 15th of October 2018. The piano where I record almost all of my demos is my mom's childhood piano that she had growing up, and it's the first piano I ever saw in my entire life.

The way that I placed my phone down onto the piano, it created this, I have probably 2,000 voice memos that begin almost identically of me putting my iPhone into this little slot on this piano. So, like, I hear a similar sound to that all the time. But that sound just sat perfectly over the metronome and just kind of became the overall groove for the whole song. As I simplified the rhythm and simplified the chord progression into just the two chords, it felt like something that was going to be a lot of fun to write to. You know, especially with this altered voice, I put on this pitch manipulation thing. And once I gave it this like very sort of feminine cute character, it really helped me. Like I felt like I could say anything.

It felt like I was wearing a mask, you know, and I could really tell the truth about what I was feeling because it was too scary for me, I think, to sing openly with my real voice. So putting on this mask of this voice processing effect, this was a step towards being able to be as open-hearted as I want to be. The first verse goes, I'll make it right again, but it's no use. He said, my hunger grows and grows. The first verse goes, I'll make it right again, but it's no use, you said, as my hunger grows and grows. It's like a desire for validation or attention or success. I think you can feel the shame that I feel around it in the way I'm talking about it. The pre-chorus goes, when the glory tries to tempt you, it may seem like what you need.

But if glory makes you happy, why are you so broken up? But if glory makes you happy, why are you so broken up? I knew from years of having been on tour and having played the big festivals and done these massive tours, that I was still left feeling pretty unfulfilled. And I was really sad. I realized external validation is a cup with a hole in the bottom and it can never be filled. And there's never enough. So in this song I'm asking, wait, what is it that we're actually hoping is going to happen here?

Because clearly it's not going to be that if I get to the next level of fame and success, that's going to be the thing that fixes all these problems. When it gets to the chorus, the image in my head is like somebody, maybe screaming into a mirror. It's like somebody trying to fully reckon with themselves and like shake themselves awake. Like what do you actually want? In this course, it's like if I scream this loud enough at myself, then I might come up with an answer.

The second verse of this song was a total struggle because I felt like if I didn't answer the question, question that was set up by the chorus, then the song was just a big nothing. Like, why am I continuing to do this if I know that this ultimately won't fulfill me? And then I just started to think about, like, what my favorite music has done for me. I thought about Daft Punk and Bonny Ver, and I came to this answer that I'm making music for the other mees out there, people like me that rely on their favorite artists to get through a hard time. That allowed me to just suspend that question and just kind of allowed me to move forward.

Because I was no longer paralyzed by the question, did you get your wish? Did you get the thing that you wanted? Once I finally realized, the answer is no, but that's okay, the world opened up. I got excited about the idea of using loops again after many, many, years of feeling like that was taboo. And the first time I threw a swinging loop on there, it was one of those things where I was like, as a music producer, when you first start, you're basically just arranging loops. And then you come to a point where you feel like you've graduated from that and you sort of take pride in arranging your own rhythms and arranging your own samples. And I think that there's a third level where you realize that none of that stuff matters.

And at this point, you'll just use anything if it works. This loop is something that I guess it's not really meant to be heard on its own, but when played in combination with the rest of the drums, it just adds something. It's a little bit of like, I found out within the last year or so that in perfuming, when people make perfumes, fragrances, and things like that, it's not unheard of for them to add to 1% of the mix a little bit of fecal odor. The idea is that it gives it more substance and it really can't be consciously registered. Now, obviously, nobody wants to be, like, buying poo-scented cologne, but when it's just subtly layered in there, so you're saying these drums are your poo of the song.

Yeah, this drum loop is the 90s, like, faecal odor of get your wish. That sound is a field recording. It's a meadow slash forest sound. And to me, nature is kind of like this stand-in, is this metaphor for health. being mentally healthy and physically healthy and trying to find some sort of well-being. One of my absolute favorite sounds in the song is the piano solo. It's just like six or seven notes in the last chorus. It's this upright piano sound and it goes like, bling, bling, bling.

What I love about it is that in that section of the song, everything is pumping to the kick drum. I just let that piano sit on top of all of that, not get pumped by the kick. It feels so human to me. I don't know. Just this little bit of expression that doesn't get pushed around by anything else. I just love that sound and something about the way that harmonized with the vocal and sits on top of the rest of the track is like my favorite moment of that song. No one's heard me sing that song in my natural voice before and maybe I'm being down to myself.

but I think my natural voice is pretty unremarkable. I'm not like a singer-singer. I'm not trying to win any singing competitions. It's part of why I leaned on this high-pitched voice character so much is because I felt like I really needed to sing and my normal voice timbre didn't really do it for me. But as I filled out the Get Your Wish chorus, it just felt a little better

when there was a small little hint of my natural voice in there because part of the journey for me towards becoming as vulnerable and as honest and sincere as I hope to be is going to be like being able to sing for real to say the things that I want to say sort of unmasked. My own desire for like attention and success and love from strangers, it feels like a monster that I manage.

Who doesn't desire love? You know what I mean? Who doesn't feel good when somebody tells them that they did a good job? It's part of me. And it's not my favorite part of me. And I fear it at times. So my story that I'm cured of wanting attention,

that I'm cured of creative block, that's just not real life. But I think of trying to get closer to being the person who you want to be. It's like I see it as an upward spiral. As long as you're generally moving in the right direction, that's something you can feel proud of. And now here's Get Your Wish by Porter Robinson in its entirety.

Visit SongExploder.net to learn more. You'll find links to buy or stream Get Your Wish, and you can watch the music video. I have a new album of my own coming out on April 24th. It's been about 15 years since I last put out a full length, and this is the first one that'll be out under my own name, Rishi Kesh Her Way. I started making Song Exploder when I was feeling lost in my own music career. And then for over a decade, I've gotten to have the... incredible conversations about the process of making music, talking to other artists,

and it made me completely rethink my relationship to music and my way of writing songs. And this album is the product of all of that. It features contributions from some of my favorite artists, including some folks that you may have heard on this podcast, like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby, Vagabon, Fenlily, and the producer Phil Wine Robe. I'm going to be on tour playing in cities across the U.S. starting in April, and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me. So every show that I'm playing will begin with a conversation about the album

with a different amazing guest moderator in each city. Like Adam Scott, Samin Nasrat, Jason Manzukas, Josh Molina, Minjin Lee, Ken Jennings, John Roderick, Austin Cleon, and more. They're all going to be my conversation partners on stage. And then I'll play with my band. The album is called In the Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs are out now. You can listen to the music and get tickets for the shows on my website, Rishi-Cash.co.

Or just go to songexploder.net slash live. That's songexploader.net slash live. Thanks. This episode was made by me, with editing help from Tini Lieberson and Casey Deal, artwork by Carlos Lerma, and music clearance by Kathleen Smith. Song Exploder is a proud member

of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent, listener-supported, artist-owned podcasts. You can learn more about our shows at Radiotopia.fm. You can follow me on Twitter and Instagram at Rishi Hereway, and you can follow the show at SongExploder.

You can also get a SongExploder t-shirt at songexploder.net slash shirt. I'm Rishi-Kesh Hereway. Thanks for listening.